Re: UTF-8 and case-insensitivity

Linus Torvalds
2004-02-17T21:22:47Z

On Tue, 17 Feb 2004, Robin Rosenberg wrote:
>
> On Tuesday 17 February 2004 17.57, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> [case-insanesititvity proposal ///]
> > See where I'm going? Would this be acceptable to you? Are there any samba
> > people who are knowledgeable about the VFS-layer and have the time/energy
> > to try something like this?
>
> So the same guy that strongly insist that a file is a string of bytes and nothing else,
> now thinks it is sane to even think of "case" of a byte. That's impossible unless you
> actually DO believe its a bunch of characters. What is it?

Which part of my argumen don't you understand?

The kernel proper thinks it's just a stream of bytes, and all the existing
interfaces do likewise.

But we'd have a kernel helper module to let samba do what it already does
now, except help it do so more efficiently?

The fact that _I_ think pathnames are just a nice stream of bytes sadly
doesn't make Windows clients do the same. Some day when I'm King Of The
World, and I can outlaw windows clients, we'll finally get rid of the
braindamage, but until then I'm pragmatic enough to say "let's help out
the poor samba people who have to deal with the crap day in and day out".

What's your problem with that?

Linus